Improvements/Concerns for post Gamescom build for Capcom Unity *now on unity forums*

Street Fighter V
141

So I guess what you’re saying is that if most heavy normals are negative on block, then they might as well just tone down the hit stop so the game doesn’t drag as much when they connect? I guess I can throw that in there.

Here’s the revised listing for the pushback on block for the normals. Typed the jist of it in bold first so its easy to see what the general point is, then explain the purpose of having the right normals push back more or less below.

  • Pushback on block for positive and negative normals are in reverse and should be switched to fit the purpose of the normals better.

1.Pushback should be lessened on light/medium/heavy normals that are plus or zero on block and set up tick throws well (Ryu’s/Chun’s s.MP or Chun’s c.LK are good examples). As of now you end up being inordinately punished on landing light and medium normals on block (generally the only ones with frame advantage) by being pushed out after landing them. Making it difficult to set up throws with the slow walk speeds and throw ranges. Now that light normals normally do not link into mediums, lessening the pushback on them would make more sense as there subsequently won’t be as much reward for landing them. Being pushed away for being plus defeats the purpose of being plus.

**2. Pushback on block for negative normals that are strong in neutral should be extended. ** Right now you are kept really close for punishes on negative normals that are normally still strong in neutral like Ryu’s c.MK, fireball and sweep, despite them being negative. This compounds the issue of the shortage of true block strings as not only is Ryu’s c.MK to fireball unsafe on block, not a true string and doesn’t combo at max range, but also is difficult to land safely due to lack of push on block making a punish way too easy on such a fundamental element of his gameplan. Things like sweeps and other low normals are that are 0 or unsafe tend to be difficult to use in neutral due to this.

142

Not every fierce is Ryu’s though. For example it could be useful to do that with Ken’s, Nash’s, Bison’s or Cammy’s standing fierce.

It seems like they also want you to do that in footsies with certain target combos like Ryu HP>HK or Ken’s kick TC or two of Nash’s TCs that start from mediums.

143

Yep. It was in fact toned down already since the very first version, but I still think it’s too high. This is the only SF game that I know of where you can hit-confirm off cr.hp without a fireball in the middle.

144

Judging by the available framedata mediums have the hitstop fierces had in SF4 and fierces have 3f more. It won’t be rare at all to see a lot of 1-hit confirms considering how many of them were “almost” possible in SF4 (with Makoto you can easily hitconfirm her fierce because of feint.)

Looking only at Ryu’s low fierce and asking for changes based on that move is confusing to me.

145

I think that’s interesting personally and it makes sense considering the kind of hitbox low fierce usually has. I think a lot of things in the game are designed around letting us see in real time what is happening instead of using multiple attacks and things to be able to react in time. The weirdness with pushback is I don’t know really. I feel like it indicates something going on we just aren’t tuned into yet like maybe v-reversal ranges or something.

Throw range/startup is I think a product of them wanting the counter-hit game to be a big part of the flow of things. So by having a 4 frame throw without big range, the close in game becomes sort of game of chicken. Say someone does jabs from point blank. I don’t like to theorycraft but let’s go through what can happen here.

They throw. You block. You are thrown.
They throw. You jab. You hit them.
They throw. You jab and somehow the timing is perfect and you counter-hit them (just for completions sake).
They throw. You throw. You tech.

They jab/short. You block.
They jab/short. You jab. You hit them.
They jab/short. You jab and you counter-hit them.
They jab/short. You jab and they counter-hit you.
They jab/short. You throw and they hit/counter-hit.

So the thing here is that counter-hits are potentially really dangerous and you have a lot to lose by messing around and not simply taking the throw. If you add in the corner and the difference in pushback and mobility that creates obviously things move further in the attackers favor. This doesn’t mean the attacker is free to go wild but a few normals with any kind of advantage which don’t push out entirely means they have a better chance of hitting with slower but better hitbox normals (in 3S at least jabs/shorts are super vulnerable hurtbox wise)

I think once people are more comfortable with the back and forth of close range, you will see a lot more throws connect since defenders are OK with taking a throw as opposed to a counter-hit combo starting off a 3 frame jab. Timely use of v-reversal will be huge.

146

It’s not just that, it’s also how way the game works right now. Heavies are basically not safe, so what’s the point of being able to hit-confirm them? If they are going to give safe-on-block heavy attacks, then by all means keep it in the game. Otherwise it’s just another mechanic that slows the game down. Another way to achieve the same effect without slowing the game down would be to give certain normals late-cancel properties.

BTW in SFIV the hitstop was roughly 8, 10 and 12f for lights, mediums and heavies respectively.

147

It’s not that heavies aren’t safe, it’s that crush counters aren’t safe (and that’s not even universal. Especially with the new build, more safe normals are being used for this purpose.) Nash has some pretty safe fierces for example. And more hitstop on fierces also means more for mediums.

Yeah, it’s 12 for medium and 15 for fierce in this game.

Personally, I find I like the feel of games with not much hitstop. But it being what it is, one-hit confirms are more likely.

148

I like the fat hitstop a lot.

The ability to confirm a lot of stuff due to big hitstop and the bonus counter-hit frames, damage and stun are really exciting to me.
There is a lot they need to tighten up which we all agree on but I a fully believe that is happening as we speak so I am not too worried.

Also. Good to see you posting in here @ilitirit .

edit: on the topic of the hitstop and low vs high. I think low hitstop goes with a certain kind of game more in general. Vampire Savior comes to mind. So, lots of high advantage moves, chaining… Defense has tools to stop it from being insane by having some kind of pushblock or universal reversal from block. Street Fighter 5 is I think very neutral focused. Where as something like Vampire Savior has longer intervals of offense/defense unless someone is just an absolute god with their pushblock and even so most characters have crazy dashes/movement to just get right back in.

149

I’m a bit reluctant to post my thoughts on the game’s current state because it’s clear that they are changing certain things between builds quite significantly. For all we know a lot of the issues mentioned may have already been addressed, or some other changes may have made things worse.

I don’t really follow SFV streams and news outside new reveals so I’m just waiting on the next beta so that I can test things and gather more data.

150

Block and hitstun on jump attack is pretty damn good in SFV.
You can combo from heavies even if you hit them high and you have to hit mediums pretty deep in order to get a heavy afterwards.
I think they got this down almost perfectly in SFV so far.

151

I just don’t see how they can claim that SF5 is a “neutral, footsie heavy game” when most normals aren’t very good, and the walkspeed is pretty bad for most characters so far. The up close game suggests that’s the direction they want to go, but nothing else seems to help their vision come to fruition.

152

That’s the difference between critique and just having an opinion.
We need real info and data to make specific remarks. So in the absence of that and due to constantly changing specifics anyway, it makes sense to keep to commenting about things which are consistent and more general.

In my case I’m trying not to assume I actually understand how SF5 will eventually play. I want to ask questions about what the developers are aiming for. I don’t like assuming I know what they want.

Ideally at some point someone could ask some hard questions and try to get an idea of how these different elements combine in the minds of the designers. So that we can say with our feedback whether they are achieving that or not. We could give specific feedback as it relates to those gameplay goals and I think that’s a lot more valuable to them then responses based on assumptions from outdated versions.

Range wise? I want to hear more about this because I am not sure I understand.
I think we also have different ideas of what each range bracket looks like. To me long range is like right outside sweep range. Close is jab. Medium is like strongs/forwards. Beyond long range is SF: Frogger Edition.

153

Well I definitely do agree with the pushback needing change. There’s too many situations where you are too far after something that should give reward and vice versa.

The hit stop thing, I guess we can wait on asking to adjust that. See what actually pans out as the other things change first.

154

Bring back the damage please if not all then most.

155

To be clear I am not attacking you or anything. That’s your opinion. However,

Do we have any idea why they changed the damage? Do we know in what ways the damage was changed?
All we know is that it was changed.

So what you should wonder is why. What made them decide to change it?
Things we haven’t really seen utilized consistently all too often? Maybe v-trigger cancel being added to more normals was allowing for some insane damage and so instead of removing the v-trigger cancels on those moves they scaled the damage back a bit. Maybe they had to do this to keep smaller combos on par with longer combos. Maybe the meter gain on v-trigger combos was allowing for some crazy stuff due to those new cancels too. Maybe the damage was so high that characters couldn’t use multiple v-reversals in a round and still use v-trigger which was simplifying the gameplay in a bad way. Who knows exactly, maybe all of these things.

I liked the big damage too but it seemed a little overboard. Maybe once people were optimizing combos and being consistent on confirms rounds would be determined by very few exchanges. That might not have fit their vision for SF 5.

156

Damage still seems good on regular and EX based combos. Damage is toned on raw/comboed supers, but that might be for the best as people learn post hard knockdown setups off of them with V Trigger. I have heard that supposedly they have removed hard knockdown on certain supers though.

Plus the new 3S style stun system helps alleviate the damage problems as you can just be poking someone and have them be in a dire situation as long as their stun is high. This wasn’t as present in SFIV due to its more traditional stun system. It’s nice that whether you are landing big combos or just poking and throwing, the threat of stun is always real. It also seems the max scaling during stun is not as bad as IV either. No more 100 damage optimized combos after stun.

157

Apparently V-Reversals now remove stun damage.

158

ffs i was thinking about the same thing the other day and i got mad because so much shit in sfv makes no god damned sense. when they first showed off sfv and i saw how long the hitstop was, i thought the entire point was to make hit confirming with medium/heavy normals easier and thus to help further push the game away from light hit confirming. but then they showed the game off some more and then the beta came out. turns out all that shit is unsafe as fuck on block so there is zero point for hit stop being so long.

who the hell is going to be hit confirming or even counter hit fishing with a normal that is so punishable on block that your opponent can easily land a 30~50% punish combo on you?

159

I break down my ranges using characters/archetypes, but yeah our ranges differ.

Long range: Dhalsim/Guile, basically 1/2-3/4 of the screen away.

Mid range: Ryu/Fei/Chun/Birdie, roughly 1/2-1/3 of the screen away where they can zone you with good normals and projectiles/rekkas.

Close range: Grappler territory, a place where you’re worrying about SPD and stuff like that.

Get off me range: Range where you now have to deal with jabs/shorts, normal throws, and crossup.

About the normals, I just feel like either they need to make neutral hurtboxes a little bigger, or make the hitboxes better match the animation. There also needs to be more damage on a lot of pokes, because contrary to popular belief, raw damage actually isn’t that high in this game. It’s actually very similar (or even lower!!) to SF4, I think it’s just a combination of: less backdashing and other annoying shit, more visually assuring lifebar, and most of the 6 characters we got have lower health (around 900-950).

For example, one of Chun’s best pokes, St.HP, has ridiculous startup (something like 10F), bad recovery (in the mirror I would punish with LK LL on block and people would start getting lost), and only 80 damage (have to hit a lower health character with ~13 to kill them). Now it’s still an OK poke, but that’s mostly because the rest of the cast has wack walkspeed and worse normals.

Another example is Ryu, which I’m sure you guys are tired of hearing about by now. His cr.mk has gimped range, negative on block, cannot be canceled into anything safe most of the time, and it only does a hilariously bad 50 damage (this is 20 less than Vanilla SF4, 10 less than all other versions).

Now there are more or there, but I’m to lazy to lost all of them. So with that, the walkspeed, and the throw ranges, I’m just not entirely sure how they want the neutral to be played? I don’t want to have to be dashing around like a lunatic all day, I’ll just go play a (better) 3S which I’m already not a huge fan of.

Oh, and to be fair about the Ryu cr.HP thing, I think its supposed to be used for if you have VT, you can decide hitconfirms to either: a) Hado for (unsafe) chip, or b) VT cancel into either safeness or combos. I still thinks it’s a horrible normal and they made a retarded decision with it, but that’s literally the only way I can play devil’s advocate with that decision.

160

That’s actually one of the elements I really enjoy about ST, and an element of SF that is essentially lost in the newer games. If you have large amounts of hit and blockstun on jumping normals, this directly implies that:

-if you hit or hit on crossup, it can always lead to a full combo
-if you block or block a crossup, you can atleast START a blockstring (i’ve heard there are some gaps in SFV, so I won’t say it’s a true blockstring)

The throw/jump-game is much more diverse in ST due to the low hit and blockstun, and especially the fact that hitstun is even lower than blockstun, as well as the overall speed of the game. As you mentioned, unless you hit your jump-in very deep, it won’t lead to a full combo - so this instead leads to a punish with a high-damaging normal, and now you are probably close enough for a low/throw mixup or tick pressure game. You may not WANT to wait until the last minute to do a jump-in attack, since it gives the opponent more time to do a reversal, jump away or jump at you, etc. So anticipating something like this, you may press a button too early - which also adds an element of an opponent baiting your early jumping attack, and punishing with a throw either on block or on hit (sac-throw). And generally on block for jumping attacks and crossups, this puts you into the low/throw/reversal game of ST where both players have options to beat each other.

This essentially creates a more dynamic fighting game if you don’t always have the option to go into a jump-in combo or jump-in blockstring.